It's a new business model, and it's coming right at us! Shoot it! Shoot it now! Don't check if it's friendly! SHOOOT IT!!!!
Adam Smith wrote how competition between vendors means lower prices for consumers.
Of course, competition means lower profits for vendors too so they pervert the 'free' market they first got rich in.
Same old same old.
Wasn't alcohol about as dangerous during the prohibition? I distinctively remember some mobsters and some shooting.
Al Capone or Tony Montana or any dealer in illegal items cannot rely on the police or the courts to protect them and ensure the deal goes down.
Al Capone used tommy guns to deal with competitors.
Budweiser and Coors use lawyers to deal with each. In theory, that is supposed to be better;-)
> They said "if you get a scrape you could potentially die," which is a factual statement if we have no effective antibiotics.
This is factual even with antibiotics.
In fact we tend to forget the only actual fact of life: you will eventually die.
That's true but the number two cause of death from the time we created agriculture and cities until just recently was infection from cuts.
Number one was disease, killing off more than half our babies.
Antibiotics is the number one reason there are so many people alive right now in the world. Seven billion humans is an incredibly large portion of the amount of life on the planet. Losing antibiotics would put a check on the human population. A serious big check. Perhaps big enough to deal with global warming but that's not 'why' it happened.
Evolution is basic biology. In fact, there is a theory that sexual reproduction was "invented" by multicellular organisms in order to stay ahead of the much faster evolution of the single-celled bacteria that preyed on them.
That war continues today and will never stop. Only the individuals fighting on both sides stop. Always.
But the basic impetus for us is to try to stay alive at least long enough to have babies.
That's what the war is all about.
Or does it mean that 99.5% of the time the sw is sure it's me and let's me keep typing but every page or two, up pops a warning in my Word document and the webcam scan scans my iris to take care of the other.5%?
Or perhaps a less intrusive way to deal with typing is to munge it up if some yutz suddenly *&^% &^% (* $%^ would work.
Remember that captured drone in Iran?
What if someone had 'accidentally' left a click drive on it?
The Iranian researchers would probably send it to their most secure facility in order to study it.
That's one way around a secure air gap;-)
"Real flying is exemplified by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, says Casey, who famously landed his US Airways plane without engines on the Hudson River and saved all the passengers in what came to be known as the 'Miracle on the Hudson.' "
Yeah, and how many times a year is that needed? JFC.
Skills like that are needed probably once every ten years.
imo, most of the folks carping probably think they themselves are good drivers and it makes me wonder exactly what they would do in a vehicle when the brakes don't quite stick or the car starts to slide in a skid. The reason new cars have ABS (Antilock Brake Systems) is because _most_ people panic and stomp the brake and hold it so the braking system takes care of figuring out how to use the available friction.
These people don't have a list of "Microsoft Customers", they simply know that Microsoft is such an 800-pound gorilla of a monoculture that they can call any random phone number, claim to know that you run Windows, and if you don't, that's simply statistical error.
Exactly. It's like the grandma scam.
Hello, Grandma?
If the person on the other end hangs up, no problem. If she says, "Is that you Laura?" then the caller _is_ Laura.
The reason the US Post Office is still hanging on is because actual physical junque mail is still cost-effective at a 1.8% return rate.
It's like a salesman who is only going to sell to one out of a hundred people. The first thing to do is to talk to 100 people and then hard sell the 3 that keep talking to you for more than 30 seconds.
Hello valued customer. Remember last year when you called our help desk and then sat on hold for 25 minutes before hanging up?
We're very sorry about that and we're just now getting through our backlog and would like to fix your computer now...
or
Hello valued customer. With our brand-new AlwaysOnMonitoringTool (TM), we amazingly smart computer geeks in the cloud are able to see you are having some problems with your computer but we cannot see all of the problems and need some help getting in and fixing it....
I can easily see novices, grandmothers and wannabe CEOs falling for crap like that. Computing is magic to most people and if you don't sound like Voldemort, then you must be one of the good wizards.
If I go out and purposely issue a takedown order by myself, then I am wrong and liable.
If I write an algorithm that does the same thing, then I am home free.
There are two ways to trade resources in human civilization.
Directly (barter this good for that good)
Indirectly (use money as a transaction interchange).
It costs time and energy (if you're an ant or money if you're human) to search for anything, whether it is food, a mate or ET.
That's why monetization is required. We can't just grow carrots and then search the heavens.
Why does everything need to have something to monetize?
Because _biology_ requires the use of resources and resources require energy.
Humans are biological; global civilization is a biological process that depends on resource use.
We have figured out ways to use 'money' to pay for moving resources around, but we haven't yet figured out ways to use resources for free.
I have cheap knives that I keep sharp.
Keeping tools you use every day in good working order is a good thing imo. It doesn't make food taste better; it just makes life easier in general.
Buying a fancy knife doesn't do anything for you (unless it can sharpen itself).
ranking colleges is kind of stupid. It's like ranking the mileage of car _companies_ such as Ford or Subaru.
It's not discriminatory enough.
The cost of every degree at any particular college is the same even though each degree has a different value in the marketplace.
The value of a liberal arts degree from Harvard might be more than the value of a liberal arts degree from local state college, but the Harvard degree will not be more valuable than a degree in nuclear physics from local state college.
You won't get any sort of useful value calculation until we start looking at the correct measurements of degrees versus colleges.
College pay the profs in different departments different wages because of economics, but they charge the same for each credit hour and that skews the valuations.
one other economic problem for Sony with places like the US Air Force building a supercomputer out of 100 PS3s is when you sell your consoles for a loss expecting to make up the difference in game licensing fees.
Of course, one other solution is to sell cheaper packages without game controllers or cables.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a new business model, and it's coming right at us! Shoot it! Shoot it now! Don't check if it's friendly! SHOOOT IT!!!!
Adam Smith wrote how competition between vendors means lower prices for consumers.
Of course, competition means lower profits for vendors too so they pervert the 'free' market they first got rich in.
Same old same old.
I haven't seen one, but I think the PS4 may look better in real life. Those odd angles make it look fatter in photos. It is quite smalland slimmmer than the XBox 360, at least
The camera always adds a few pounds ;-)
Must be why supermodels have to be super thin.
Wasn't alcohol about as dangerous during the prohibition? I distinctively remember some mobsters and some shooting.
Al Capone or Tony Montana or any dealer in illegal items cannot rely on the police or the courts to protect them and ensure the deal goes down. ;-)
Al Capone used tommy guns to deal with competitors.
Budweiser and Coors use lawyers to deal with each. In theory, that is supposed to be better
> They said "if you get a scrape you could potentially die," which is a factual statement if we have no effective antibiotics.
This is factual even with antibiotics.
In fact we tend to forget the only actual fact of life: you will eventually die.
That's true but the number two cause of death from the time we created agriculture and cities until just recently was infection from cuts.
Number one was disease, killing off more than half our babies.
Antibiotics is the number one reason there are so many people alive right now in the world. Seven billion humans is an incredibly large portion of the amount of life on the planet. Losing antibiotics would put a check on the human population. A serious big check. Perhaps big enough to deal with global warming but that's not 'why' it happened.
Evolution is basic biology. In fact, there is a theory that sexual reproduction was "invented" by multicellular organisms in order to stay ahead of the much faster evolution of the single-celled bacteria that preyed on them.
That war continues today and will never stop. Only the individuals fighting on both sides stop. Always.
But the basic impetus for us is to try to stay alive at least long enough to have babies.
That's what the war is all about.
What does that half-percent mean?
Or does it mean that 99.5% of the time the sw is sure it's me and let's me keep typing but every page or two, up pops a warning in my Word document and the webcam scan scans my iris to take care of the other .5%?
Or perhaps a less intrusive way to deal with typing is to munge it up if some yutz suddenly *&^% &^% (* $%^ would work.
Remember that captured drone in Iran? ;-)
What if someone had 'accidentally' left a click drive on it?
The Iranian researchers would probably send it to their most secure facility in order to study it.
That's one way around a secure air gap
Yeah but what are the chances that someone with a Microsoft product would actually be having troubles and need to call tech support? ;-)
Never mind
"Real flying is exemplified by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, says Casey, who famously landed his US Airways plane without engines on the Hudson River and saved all the passengers in what came to be known as the 'Miracle on the Hudson.' "
Yeah, and how many times a year is that needed? JFC.
Skills like that are needed probably once every ten years.
imo, most of the folks carping probably think they themselves are good drivers and it makes me wonder exactly what they would do in a vehicle when the brakes don't quite stick or the car starts to slide in a skid. The reason new cars have ABS (Antilock Brake Systems) is because _most_ people panic and stomp the brake and hold it so the braking system takes care of figuring out how to use the available friction.
...what the article is about, if the plane is almost always under computer control how do you keep the human pilots competent?
People on computer help desks everywhere see that same problem daily. Incompetent users trying to operate competent computers.
Unless they were talking about identifying who infected The Doctor.
Who are y'all talking about? Doctor Whom?
I'd go after the AOL market.
If you're still on AOL, then you definitely _need_ our updates kind sir. ...
Click on the Windows 95 start button then bring up Netscape then
These people don't have a list of "Microsoft Customers", they simply know that Microsoft is such an 800-pound gorilla of a monoculture that they can call any random phone number, claim to know that you run Windows, and if you don't, that's simply statistical error.
Exactly. It's like the grandma scam.
Hello, Grandma?
If the person on the other end hangs up, no problem. If she says, "Is that you Laura?" then the caller _is_ Laura.
The reason the US Post Office is still hanging on is because actual physical junque mail is still cost-effective at a 1.8% return rate.
It's like a salesman who is only going to sell to one out of a hundred people. The first thing to do is to talk to 100 people and then hard sell the 3 that keep talking to you for more than 30 seconds.
Hello valued customer. Remember last year when you called our help desk and then sat on hold for 25 minutes before hanging up?
We're very sorry about that and we're just now getting through our backlog and would like to fix your computer now...
or
Hello valued customer. With our brand-new AlwaysOnMonitoringTool (TM), we amazingly smart computer geeks in the cloud are able to see you are having some problems with your computer but we cannot see all of the problems and need some help getting in and fixing it....
I can easily see novices, grandmothers and wannabe CEOs falling for crap like that. Computing is magic to most people and if you don't sound like Voldemort, then you must be one of the good wizards.
If I go out and purposely issue a takedown order by myself, then I am wrong and liable.
If I write an algorithm that does the same thing, then I am home free.
There are two ways to trade resources in human civilization.
Directly (barter this good for that good)
Indirectly (use money as a transaction interchange).
It costs time and energy (if you're an ant or money if you're human) to search for anything, whether it is food, a mate or ET.
That's why monetization is required. We can't just grow carrots and then search the heavens.
If I buy a ticket and SETI discovers aliens, do I win?
Or lose?
Why does everything need to have something to monetize?
Because _biology_ requires the use of resources and resources require energy.
Humans are biological; global civilization is a biological process that depends on resource use.
We have figured out ways to use 'money' to pay for moving resources around, but we haven't yet figured out ways to use resources for free.
In the US everything needs to be carefully cloaked in terms of protection from terrorists.
No, the US is equally up front about that, you just doubt the motive.
You discover motive by examining how the term "terrorist" is defined.
Sheesh. Those new leaders sound as bad as the folks at Sony. Or Apple. Or ...
I switched to Bing because Google is evil
And you know fer sure we can all trust Micro$oft with our data because of past behavior.
I have cheap knives that I keep sharp.
Keeping tools you use every day in good working order is a good thing imo. It doesn't make food taste better; it just makes life easier in general.
Buying a fancy knife doesn't do anything for you (unless it can sharpen itself).
ranking colleges is kind of stupid. It's like ranking the mileage of car _companies_ such as Ford or Subaru.
It's not discriminatory enough.
The cost of every degree at any particular college is the same even though each degree has a different value in the marketplace.
The value of a liberal arts degree from Harvard might be more than the value of a liberal arts degree from local state college, but the Harvard degree will not be more valuable than a degree in nuclear physics from local state college.
You won't get any sort of useful value calculation until we start looking at the correct measurements of degrees versus colleges.
College pay the profs in different departments different wages because of economics, but they charge the same for each credit hour and that skews the valuations.
If any of you are considering purchasing the console, do ponder for a moment that you're supporting a company that's actively user hostile.
Which console are you talking about ;-)
btw, the biggest selling consoles of all time are made and sold in China.
well you should be happy then that they're this time releasing it with zero features they can drop and instead are to gradually insert them..
Given Sony's history, I'm pretty sure something will be gradually inserted some place.
one other economic problem for Sony with places like the US Air Force building a supercomputer out of 100 PS3s is when you sell your consoles for a loss expecting to make up the difference in game licensing fees.
Of course, one other solution is to sell cheaper packages without game controllers or cables.